The Valentine's Day Wrap Up Part 1:J.R. Wins

I realize it's been an exceptionally long time since I last "blogged". I had a whole post written out explaining why, but then I realized, nobody cares. I've decided to kick off my (semi)return to blogging with a few stories that have been sitting in the vault for a while.

This particular story is probably one of the bigger ones of my life, but then 5 days later I met Shaq at a diner, and that story sort of occupied my time for a while.

Back in February I ran a contest to send flowers out on Valentine's day. The Valentine's day contest has become a bit of a tradition around here, but last year I took it to a whole new level sending all manner of prizes and gifts. Despite the fact that there were numerous entries deserving of flowers, and despite the fact that no inmate received flowers, I still feel like J.R. was really the winner. He took upon himself to not only enter the contest and provide insightful comments on the other entries, he also did a little work of his own.

Friday was the day before Valentine's, but most of the "prizes" were scheduled to arrive that day. Only for the "big winner" did I actually pay the extra ten bucks for Saturday delivery. As I strolled in to work, I was mentally making notes of what was going where, and double checking to make sure I hadn't missed something. For 2009 it wasn't just a contest, it was an operation.

I entered my office and became the envy of every extremely myopic drunken 22 year old female. I had received flowers from the Baller himself.

J.R. didn't just send me flowers for Valentine's. He took it one step further and included the following, heartfelt poem:

Bitches Ain't Shit,

But Tricks And Hoes.

Maybe It's Time You Give Up

On Girls, And Switch to Bros.

Have A Bro-Mantic

Valentine's Day!

Baller

By noon things were on trucks and "out for delivery". All told there were 3 sets of flowers, 5 gift boxes from The Popcorn Factory, and one set of two dozen long stemmed Roses.

I hate sitting around to see how a plan unfolds, and since I had no particular Valentine of my own, when Kendall, my 6'1 modelesque friend, invited me to L.A. to hang out for the weekend I took the rest of the day off work and headed home to pack. As I walked in to my building I ran in to Agnes, my ninety-two year old building crush.

"So, any Valentine's day weekend plans for you?" I asked.
"Valentine's? Love?" she looked at me like I was crazy, "I'm too old for that stuff."

I reached the eleventh floor, and minutes later I had a weekend's worth of clothes packed in to a travel suitcase. I was about to leave when I spotted J.R.'s flowers. I didn't think they'd do much good in my place since I'd be in L.A., so I took them with me.

As I walked out of the Landmark I handed them to the guy working the front desk.

"Could you give these to Agnes for me?"
"And who should I say they're from?"
"Oh. Just tell her they're from a secret admirer."

Contrary to popular belief, I'm still around

I've just been busy with completely uninteresting things. But just to let you know I thought I'd drop a few random bits on you.

• Maybe I need to consider older ladies...
  On Saturday there was a big party down stairs. It was "featuring" 3 different DJ's, or so the fliers that were taped to every visible spot of the buildings would have me believe. I'm not much for social gatherings with people that I do know, let alone complete strangers, so I was of course not in attendance.
  
  Besides Sean's annual St. Patty's day part was that night, and 2 parties on one day and they might revoke my nerd card.
  
  As I returned from work(On Saturday no less!) I bumped in to Agnes walking in to the building. My 90 year old building crush greeted me with a smile.
  "How come ya not at the partay?" She asked while the techno blasted around us.
  Un tis un tis un tis
  "Eh, you know... Just not my scene"
  "I hear ya. I think I'm too young to go there." she chuckled a little.
  Maybe I really do like this girl?


• My favorite joke
  Despite the fact that it's not that amusing I love being a party and asking people, "What comes before Part-B?"


• Fun with Google...
  My blog keeps track of a few things, like how people end up here. Here's a few interesting things I've learned...
  
  If you go to Google images and enter "Tina Duh" a picture of Ruthie and I shows up 4th.
  
  "Chilean girl" and "I Crush you" will both lead to the same picture although the latter doesn't show up till page 2.
  
  An inordinate number of people hit my blog after searching for "Shirley Manson Feet"


• Random Recognition... sort of.
  Someone randomly found the Developer Trap movie and posted it on their own blog. It spread to a few different blogs. I think some people believed it was a movie I made as a way to help recruit developers. Little did they know, it was just me not wanting to actually work at work.


• Something more interesting than this
  The very sexy and interesting Rose, who happens to also be Sesquipedalis's second biggest fan writes in to say:
  Dear Sesquipedalis. You're white, you should check out the following site:
  
  http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/
  
  Okay, it happened nothing like that, but she's at home blushing as she reads that, and I'm nothing if not kind to my 3 readers.

Alright, this post is proof that the well has gone completely dry. My mom did mention, "I've got a cute new girl who works for me. Her name is Hope." Chances are there won't be any good stories there though, so if you need to swing the bat and hook me up with a cute, slightly nerdy girl so I can embarrass myself with her and then write about it, that'd be swell... Not for me you know, for the readers.

The UFADAR swings both ways/Jesse gets a new building crush

I really wish I had the writing ability to do this story justice, but you'll have to take my word for it that the real version of this was far more amusing than what I've managed to detail here. That being said, sorry it took so long. For some reason I just couldn't finish it. Sorry for the length. Feel free to stop in the middle and make yourself a sandwich, or some homemade lunchables. If that doesn't work give me a call and I'll read it to you.

"Someone in the building was looking for help with their computer."
"Uhm... yeah..." I responded with a bit of hesitation.

It was Allen, former doorman and now resident of my building, on the other end of the phone. He's the all around good Samaritan kind of guy, so I didn't want to come right out and say it, but normally helping people with their computer ends up being a pain in my ass that I'd rather avoid.

"It's Agnes, do you know her?"
"Red hair? About 4 feet tall?" I asked, now somewhat guilty for being hesitant. "Feel free to give her my number."

I'd run in to Agnes a few times in the lobby over the past year. She was an older lady(I'd assumed in her 70's) who always had a smile and a "Hello" as she ran off to her job, volunteering at the hospital. She's the kind of lady that makes you feel like you should hug her goodbye and say thank you for the cookies when she leaves.

After a bit of phone tag we finally arranged a date and time for me to come down and assess the damage. From what I could gather she and her sister had bought condos next door to each other so that Agnes could take care of her. When her sister recently moved in to a retirement home, Agnes moved across the hall to live in the bigger unit.

"When I bought the computa, the... the Geek. You know the Geek from tha Best Buy? He set it up for me" she informed me with her New York type accent and a certain amount of innocence reserved only for children and the elderly when dealing with technology. "I asked the man from Qwest if I needed to call the Geek back, but they said they could do it. He moved the computa for me. And... and now the thing doesn't work!" Her voice perked up at every use of the word "Geek".

Some quick investigation revealed that qwest had really done a number on her computer. I'll save the nerdtastic explanations for offline discussions if anyone is interested, but about an hour later I had most everything fixed except for her email.

"Okay, you need your name and password to sign in here" I told her as I attempted to fix the email issue and moved aside to give her access to the keyboard.

"Oh, it's agnesbridget and the password is..." she revealed what most people consider "private" without hesitation.

"You really shouldn't tell anyone y..." I began to protest, but gave up at the futility of it.

The login didn't work, and after a half hour conversation with qwest we found that they had disabled the account and it couldn't be recovered. I had some choice words for them over their treatment of a customer, but eventually I gave up and decided to sign her up for a free account at yahoo.

I began to fill out the registration information when I got in the kind of situation that I always seem to screw up despite my best intentions.

"Uhm... it uh... wants your birthday" I asked hesitantly. Was it rude to ask? Should I have just put in a fake date? Would that have been more rude?

"Oh. April 11, 1917" she said with a big smile. "I'm an old bag"

I was soon done with the necessary changes. The printer was working again so she could write her niece. "She never writes back anyhow. I don't know why I botha".

The shortcut to her recipe site was placed on the desktop. "It's the only thing I use tha Intenet for."

Everything else that could possibly be distracting was placed away in a nice folder. "I don't have time for all that nonsense"

She offered to pay me for my time, but I was more than happy to do it, and didn't feel right taking money from a 90 year old woman, especially one who's more proficient with the computer than half the people I know.

---

About a week later Liang was supposed to come over to watch the Sun's game. I had hung up the phone with him less than 5 minutes before when I heard a knock at my door. I thought maybe he had tricked me and called from the lobby so I threw the door open and jumped outside only to find Agnes standing there, now somewhat startled.

"Oh... uh hi" I stammered as she simultaneously announced, "Ya... Ya got no room unda ya door!"

I looked at her somewhat puzzled until she pulled a card out. "I tried to shove this under it, but it doesn't fit. Ya got no room unda ya door" she repeated.

"I wanted to say thank you for helping me out the other day. I was at the Biltmore. That Apple store. I don't know what they do there. My son... he... he's got one of those... what do you call em? A tripod. He loves the thing."

"Oh, an iPod?" I asked.

"Yeah, it plays tha music or whateva." she commented with a dismissive wave of her hand. "I got no use for all that. But he seems to love it." At this she handed me a card. After another thank you or two she left and I went back inside to open the card and find a 50 dollar Apple Store gift card.

Liang showed up minutes later and I related the whole story to him. My pure amusement at the whole ordeal was enough for him to start ribbing me about my 90 year old crush. The teasing continued until half time came and we decided to leave for dinner.

"Well, I always did want a short red headed girl." I relented as gathered our things to go. "And besides, a sweet, cute girl brought me a card. That's better than you've done in a while"

We were half way down the hall when the door to 11-N flew open and Agnes came bounding out with an energy normally reserved for those a tenth of her age. "Oh! I got distracted. I met this nice lady and decided ta chat for a while. I think I'm stuck on the 11th floor!"

We smiled, nodded and said our pleasantries as we made way to the elevator.

Once out of earshot Liang turned to me with a huge grin on his face and finally gave in, "All right. I see it"